


Belongs With You

by OneFail_AtATime



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Episode Fix-it, F/M, Gendrya - Freeform, Season/Series 08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 21:05:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18764212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneFail_AtATime/pseuds/OneFail_AtATime
Summary: Arya remains in King's Landing after the war, haunted by her thoughts and hiding from her emotions.





	Belongs With You

Nobody had expected anything to end the way that it had.

After all that she had been through, after all that she had done, Arya Stark hadn’t even expected to survive.

It’s why she had left Winterfell without saying a proper farewell to anyone. She had heard that the Hound was taking off, saw her chance to leave as well, and slipped through the broken halls of the castle in order to go back to her chambers and pack as quickly as possible. Though if she were to be entirely honest, she had been packing days before when she had stood with the mess of a war council and later learned of her brother- ~~her cousin’s~~ true parentage. Winterfell wasn’t the place that she had thought it to be. So she had left. She didn’t say goodbye to Jon, to Bran, to Sansa.

She didn’t say goodbye to _him_.

She had made her way South with the Hound at her side and through the breaks in her silence, they had formed a plan. Cersei was going to die. The Mountain was going to die. The only real question was how. Getting to Walder Frey had been relatively easy. The disgusting traitor had just won Riverrun. He was hardly expecting an attack from the inside. And that had made her revenge all the greater. But they knew that everyone would surround the Mad Queen. She would be heavily guarded and have her trusted advisors at her side. Arya Stark wouldn’t have been able to walk into King’s Landing.

But No One could.

Her emotions had gone back behind the wall that she had built during her time in Braavos. It was the only way that she had been able to leave the North behind, leave her family behind, leave him behind. Emotions were dangerous because they muddled your mind and made you think irrationally. You thought with your heart and not your head when emotions were involved and that got you killed. And though she hadn’t planned to survive her trip to the capital, she had wanted to ensure that she was alive long enough to see the last smirk fall from the Mad Queen’s face. She said so to the Hound in a rare moment when she had felt like talking. The man had grunted in response and went back to gnawing on the rabbit leg she had caught for their supper.

Except Clegane was gone now. He had been cut down by his grotesque monster of a brother and though the Hound had brought down the Mountain, they both knew that he would die from his wounds. Giving him the gift of Mercy after having denied it all those years before had brought waves of memories crashing down around her as she watched her friend die. The young woman turned assassin did her best but the memories of the loved ones that she had lost and left behind broke through just the same. Father. Mother. Robb. Rickon. Syrio. They were ghosts that she couldn’t escape. And the living haunted her as well. Bran. Sansa. Jon. _Him_.

Weeks later and she couldn’t even bring herself to even _think_ his bloody name. He had been so happy, so hopeful. But there were parts of her that he would never understand. No one couldn’t be a lady. Her hands were suited for a blade, not holding and nursing his black haired, blue eyed babes. What lord would want a lady who knew more about poisons and lying than she did about manners? What child would want a mother who knew more about death than they did about raising a new life in this world?

Had he even survived the battle?

Sansa had been the one that she revealed herself to as she pulled off the servant girl’s face and emerged from the shadows once her sister had made a formal appearance in King’s Landing. Nobody else knew how the Mad Queen had come to meet her end but Sansa did. Because all those months before, when they had bonded over a dead mockingbird, Arya had voiced her wish to be the one who pulled the Lannister from the throne that was stained with the blood of her family. Sansa had been the one to accept her. But accepting a lost sister was much easier than accepting a no one who would never be a lady.

Arya had now helped to end two wars but she still couldn’t manage to get the image of his face out of her mind. His heartbreak had been so clear in the ocean blue eyes that she had wanted to wake up next to for the rest of her life. His mouth, the very same mouth that had made her feel so very much _alive_ , had been left in a frown that she felt would be a permanent scar on her own heart. They had laid together before the battle and the man had come to her as a newly made lord to declare his love like in one of the damned songs that Sansa’s southron squire was always singing.

Except life wasn’t a song. She wasn’t a lady.

The chaos that filled the capital after Cersei Lannister’s death had brought a sense of calm to her and had given her the time to think over everything that had happened since she had last been in the city. She had been so many different people. She had been no one. But she had never been a lady. Arya Stark would never be a lady. Death haunted her, even after she had stabbed the Night King. Death was something that came for everyone, it was something that not even a no one could escape. The darkness that the witch had seen inside her was just as deadly as it had been all those years before, if not more so.

Sansa’s voice broke through her thoughts.

“Get out of this keep, Arya. Go to the godswood. Or even to the merchant streets. You’ve looked dreadful ever since I’ve been here. Fresh air will do your health wonders.”

“There are the training yards, Lady Arya.” Podrick suggested softly.

Arya rolled her eyes. Anywhere would be better than at her sister’s side in the Red Keep while the Lady of Winterfell made doe eyes at the squire she had fallen in love with as they traveled south along the King’s Road.

It was disgusting.

And heartbreaking.

Because hadn’t _he_ looked at her that way? Hadn’t she seen the look in his eyes just before she kissed him that night and again that next morning as the dawn broke over their burning castle? Nobody had even known that she had been the one to slay the Night King just then but he had looked at her with that stupid look on his stupid face and she had wanted nothing more than to kiss the smile off his stupid lips.

Stupid fool. Stupid bull.

Arya was happy for her sister, truly. Podrick Payne was never someone that she had imagined would catch Sansa’s attention but he was kind and only seemed to think of her sister’s happiness. After everything that her sister had been through, after all the scheming she had done to maintain an independent North, Sansa deserved to have someone who would love her unconditionally. She could see them married in a year’s time. He would be all too happy to take on the Stark name and they would have little red haired, brown eyed Starklings that ran all over Winterfell.

Disgusting.

Heartbreaking.

Gods, what was she becoming?

It was the training pit that helped to ease her troubles. The pits were abandoned in preparation of the celebration so she found herself in an area along the coast with the sand beneath her boots and the wind of the sea against her face. It was soothing and helped to calm her so when thoughts of _him_ kept creeping back as they so often did, she was more inclined to think on them rather than automatically shove them away.

Podrick knew of Sansa’s schemes, of all her scars, and he still loved her for it. Seeing the pair so happy in the city that had first brought them together made her think about how things might have gone differently if she had trusted herself to tell the truth all those weeks before. But she had been a coward. The Hound had called her out on it once on their trip south and the grizzled dog had been right, though she never would have admitted it to the man.

Rejection was what she had feared. The thought of his blue eyes filling with disgust at all the things she had done was a fear that cut deeper than any sword ever could. That pushed her to leave with the memories that she had and she prayed he wouldn’t come to hate her for all that she had done to him.

_Him._

She still couldn’t think of his name.

Needle felt light in her grip as it cut through the air. The days were still short in winter and with the sun setting soon, the temperature had begun to drop. The chill reminded her of home, or of what she had once considered to be her home. It reminded her of afternoons spent in the training yard, watching as cart after cart of dragonglass was unloaded and brought to the forge. It reminded her of the clouded breath between them as they whispered about Death’s faces. He hadn’t seemed afraid of her then. He had seemed … intrigued, like she was a weapon that he couldn’t decide how she had been made. _‘Because that’s what I am, aren’t I?’_ she thought as she lowered herself to lean against the training yard wall.

_‘A weapon.’_

It was a familiar voice that broke through her thoughts yet again. “Lady Arya,” the gruff accent she recognized as Ser Davos called. She had heard him approaching, assumed that he had been sent to collect her and did her best to ignore him up until that point. She hadn’t even looked in his direction.

“If you’ve come to drag me back then I’m not ready to go, Ser Davos. The sea is rather calming, don’t you think?”

“Aye. That it is.” The knight spoke from behind her before he cleared his throat. “But I think this belongs with you.”

She reached for her dagger and found it safe at her belt. Needle was still sheathed as well. She began to turn. What could he-

“Oh.”

She had turned and saw what he had meant. Standing there beside the old Stormlander smuggler was the Lord Paramount of the Stormlands himself. Though his clothes were new, trimmed and fitted for a man of his new station, every other part of him looked a mess. They had traveled together for years and after seeing him standing there broken, dirty, and unshaven, it was honestly the worst that she had ever seen him. In another world, in another time, she would have teased him about how comical it was to see a man of his height stooped and broken but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything in that moment because she had seen that look before. It was the same look he had given her back in Winterfell when she had declined his proposal. His blue eyes widened in shock, telling her that whatever Ser Davos had said to get him out to the training yard certainly hadn’t included anything about her.

A red wound to his cheek caught her attention and she found herself searching the rest of him for any other signs of injury. The idea of him being in pain pulled at her heart even when she knew deep down that she had caused him more pain than any battle wound would bring. But she had been trying to protect him in that moment from the danger of King’s Landing, from the danger that she was herself. Did any of it matter now that the war was over?

He had changed so much in their time apart yet he was still the same. His beard was thick and tangled, his new clothes wrinkled, bloodstained, and coated in mud, and the deep bruise like circles under his eyes told her that he hadn’t been sleeping, if only because they matched her own.

For the first time in weeks, she spoke his name.

“Gendry.”

Because that’s who he still was, wasn’t it? He wasn’t just the _‘he’_ or _‘him’_ that he had been while haunting her thoughts and he was more than just a lord. Standing there before her, looking even more heartbroken than he had when she had left him, he was only Gendry and she was only Arya, just as they had been that night before the battle when they had clung to one another, marked each other’s skin, and breathed the other’s name for what could have been the last time.

“Arya.”

Despite the uncertainty and discomfort that filled his voice, she moved towards him anyway. She didn’t even think she had a choice. It was as if something pulled her to him, like the moon pulled the waves across the sea. Something Davos had said came back to her and she smiled as she reached to place her hand against Gendry’s cheek, loving the way that he briefly closed his eyes, as if trying to convince himself that it wasn’t all a dream. His beard was coarse and scratched against her palm but his hand closing over her own brought a sigh of relief to her lips.

Because _she_ had been the stupid fool.

**_‘Belongs with you.’_ **

Because he did, didn’t he? He didn’t belong _to her_ , just as she didn’t belong _to him_. They were simply equals who belonged _with_ one another. She just hadn’t allowed herself to admit it until he had been standing right there.

Everything that she had refused to admit came rushing back. He had been completely honest when he had said that Storm’s End meant nothing without her. He simply wanted to be _with_ her. It was all that she had wanted, all those years ago, even if she hadn’t been able to say it directly. Gendry had been at her side for years. He had never questioned her will to fight. He had only wanted to protect her. And now she knew that it didn’t make her weak. The pact protected _each other_.

His blue eyes were staring back.

“I meant what I said,” he whispered, his voice low and hoarse from days of silence.

“I know,” she whispered in return, her own voice thick with emotion that was on the verge of breaking through. Because gods did she know.

Arya wasn’t sure whose lips found whose first. All she knew was that his mouth was crushing against hers and that the touch of him sent a burning warmth through her, filling the holes that she hadn’t realized had even been left open.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I am sure that we can agree as a whole that Episode 4 was a disaster. There's a reason it is on it's way to have the lowest rating of all the episodes. Benioff and Weiss were the writers responsible for the episode and in one swoop, they knocked out everything that Dave Hill and Bryan Cogman attempted to build in the first two episodes of the season. Arya has been a favorite character of mine from the very beginning and her complexity is something that should be explored, not ignored. The proposal rejection could have happened in a dozen different ways that still would have held true to the characters themselves. 
> 
> But I just had this image in my head of Davos dragging a brokenhearted Gendry back to Arya once the war is over with a "you break it, you fix it" mentality and I couldn't get it out of my head. If I had the money, I would commission any and all artists out there to sketch this out because I know that we won't get it on the show. 
> 
> Follow my Gendrya justification ramblings on Tumblr and ramble with me!  
> @onefail-at-atime


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